I have found history can be a moving target and fiction allows me to re-imagine the motivations and aspirations of some of the most colorful characters in American history during the gilded age. This website chronicles my research journey.

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Released May 2015

1873 - 1883 New York History, like love, is so apt to surround her heroes in an atmosphere of imaginary brightness.- The Last of the Mohicans - James Fenimore Cooper.

William and Ella find their fortunes and reputations threatened by their father’s questionable business dealings as head of the Union Pacific Railroad. As the family's finances teeter on the brink of bankruptcy, both brother and sister are whisked from their privileged lifestyle in high society London to the untamed Adirondack forests. It is in this wilderness landscape that the tension between passion and propriety, their future and their family, turn their worlds upside down.

1885 - 1891 New York and London

I am longing to be with you, and by the sea, where we can talk together freely and build our castles in the air. - Bram Stoker, Dracula (1897)

When Dr. Durant dies, William and Ella are finally free from his domineering influence. William takes the helm of the railroad and transportation empire his father started and follows his vision of grandeur in the Adirondack wilderness. Ella takes off for London to lead the life of an author, cavorting with the literary giants of the time. Inevitably, their worlds collide as they wrangle over the legacy left behind by their father.

1892-1932 New YorkAt two o'clock in the morning, if you open your window and listen,You will hear the feet of the Wind that is going to call the sun.And the trees in the Shadow rustle and the trees in the moonlight glisten,And though it is deep, dark night, you feel that the night is done.

― The Dawn Wind, Rudyard Kipling (1911)

It is 1931, the heirs to a bygone fortune, William West Durant and his sister Ella are in the last decade of their lives and contemplating their legacy. William returns to visit the estate he once possessed in the Adirondacks to speak with the current owner, copper magnate Harold Hochschild, who is writing a history of the region and wants to include a biography of William. Simultaneously, Ella is visiting with an old family friend and former lover, Poultney Bigelow, journalist with Harpers Magazine, who talks her into telling her own story.